The goal of this conference is to launch a debate on interdisciplinaritywithin the field of English studies in France. It follows a preliminarymeeting organized by IDEA in February 2006, which laid some of thetheoretical and practical groundwork for this reflection.It is common today to claim to be interdisciplinary in the social and humansciences in general and in the study of foreign languages and cultures,traditionally organized in France around three axes (literature,civilization, and linguistics). It is much less common to reflect on whatis meant by "interdisciplinarity", both as a set of critical or theoreticalpostulates and as a range of practices in teaching and research. Thejuxtaposition of disciplinarily distinctive points of view, the opening upof reflection, notably in studies of the English-speaking world, to relatedfields at colloquia or in the tables of contents of academic works, ispractically "de rigueur" these days. But this inter- or pluridisciplinaryimperative (one could almost call it a doxology) can also mask the renewalof disciplinary demarcations, the reproduction of the same under the coverof a project to which it is all the more appealing to adhere if it does notcall into question existing practices and ways of thinking.Papers, in French or in English, could focus on theoretical models or onpractices of interdisciplinarity (e.g., the links between inter- andpluridisciplinarity; the relations between disciplines, such as linguisticsand literature, and fields; the transfer of methods and concepts betweendisciplines and fields). Papers could examine French, European, orAnglo-American intellectual or institutional frameworks or the relationsbetween them.

Please send your proposals to the members of the organizing committee by 30January 2007 to: